On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 22:56 +0100, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> Due to my lousy English - "Danglish" - I referred to the (K)ubuntu
> install, not FC6 (Where I actually lurked on the ML some months
> before installing it so I avoided the LVM and SELinux stuff). The
> default (K)ubuntu install is open source only, if someone want the
> proprietary stuff further repos must be enabled, just like FC.
>
> Mark Shuttleworth has some remarks on non-free drivers here :
>
> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/95
>
> I was a bit surprised when the (K)ubuntu installed an ATI driver all
> by itself, but it seems that the driver (UTAH) is open source as
> well.
>
> Kaj.
There needs to be a balance between the right of individuals to own
their own property (specifically in our realm of discussion,
intellectual property) and the right of individuals to control the
source to the operating system they run. Currently the trend with the
Cox's of the world is to abolish the rights of companies and individuals
to protect their own intellectual property rights; at any cost. The
plain simple definition of socialism is the abolition of personal
property to another jurisdiction other than the true owner of that
personal property; be that a dictator or a government, or a group of
socio-fascist developers. In this case, the developers seek to take the
decision about intellectual property rights OUT of the public domain
(the "Market") and to FORCIBLY TAKE AWAY the right of the company or
individual to license driver-code the way the code authors see fit.
This is not "freedom", it is in reality a form of slavery.
The way they seek to accomplish this is by writing the kernel so that
it will reject any module that it (the kernel) perceives as NOT open
source. This is not a technical task, it is an ideological task. The
problem I have and that I have always had is that ideological decisions
are the domain of the USER, NOT THE KERNEL. Furthermore, and more to
the point, ideological decisions are the purview of the USER and NOT THE
DEVELOPERS. The kernel is and has always been a product of technical
merit (which was freely given, as opposed to forcibly taken); the
ideologues in the developer community seek to slave the kernel itself to
their own personal ideological goals.
THAT is where the line is being crossed; THAT is the abhorrent
corruption we are faced with. The developers have no rights to other
people's intellectual property rights or software licensing decisions,
OR the JURISDICTION THEREOF; yet in face of that fact they seek to
forcibly TAKE or CONTROL what is not theirs by *force*. How? Because
since they control the kernel, they essentially have monopoly power over
the Linux operating system. They are currently abusing that leverage to
execute forced licensing upon any developer that writes driver code. No
longer is the programmer the arbiter of the license of his own work. The
use of such a monopoly power for ideological ends is force and is
therefore by definition fascism. Fascism is nothing less than an
advanced aspect of socialism; the same is true of communism. Both
fascism and communism are *consequences* of socialism. In the linux
world today we are now seeing both consequences manifest themselves in
the religious fanatic RMS sectors of the community.
The ONLY thing that has stopped this process.....and I do mean the
ONLY thing, is Linus Torvalds. He has made it clear that the Linux
kernel will NOT be turned into an ideological tool (but even as he has
made this clear, the offending messages remain entrenched in the kernel
right now as we speak, running prospective developers away and causing
many developers to question the domain of Linux as being anything near
fruitful). For this he has suffered much criticism and hate mail. In
the same regard, ESR has suffered much criticism and hate mail. This is
the modern rendition of the medieval persecution of the Jews by the
Flagellants during the Black Plague. We have the religious fanatics,
and we have the innocent heros, deprived of justice. The only difference
is that instead of maniacal religious zealots beating themselves with
chains and murdering Jews, we have the present day maniacal religious
Stallman nose pickers, and instead of the Jews we have Torvalds, ESR,
and those of us with sufficient testosterone to support their cause.
LX
--
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A Kernel Of Socialism
greatunwashed: module license 'great_unwashed' taints kernel.
ich: no version for "unwashed_register_device" found: kernel tainted.
Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module,
which will not be allowed in the future
Please see the file Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
in the kernel source tree for more details.
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